What is the COLLAPSE project about?
In Classical Philology, a discipline which has long relied on the figure of the author, authorless texts are an ‘elephant in the room’. In antiquity, however, long before the introduction of copyright, texts were the universal commons of all those who drew on them.
COLLAPSE attempts to subvert the classificatory binary of genuine and authentic texts versus ‘forgeries’. Moreover, the inclusion of different fields of knowledge aims to break down theoretical boundaries to neighboring disciplines. Overall, COLLAPSE aims to fundamentally reconsider processes of (an)onymization and to contribute to a better understanding of interauctorial mechanisms in Greek text production in the imperial period - and beyond.
Objective
COLLAPSE aims (1) to reinterpret the forms of (an)onymization as forms of ‘fan fiction’ or as attempts to ‘rewrite’ previous authors; (2) to analyze how boundaries between model authors and their subsequent ‘imitators’ collapsed in Greek literature; (3) to explore the relation between poems that were ascribed to alleged authors and unattributed texts, thus differentiating forms, functions, and contexts of (an)onymization; (4) to develop a non-normative terminology and classificatory system that moves authorless texts from various fields to the center of Greek literary history.
